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Editorial

Post-cardiac surgery arrest: what to do in the ICU (intensive care unit)

Department of Cardio-Vascular Surgery, CHUV, BH 10-275, Rue du Bugnon 46, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland

Received 4 February 2009; received in revised form 4 February 2009; accepted 4 February 2009.

^_* Corresponding author. Tel.: +41 21 314 22 79; fax: +41 21 314 28 79. (Email: ludwig.von-segesser@chuv.ch). (URL: http://www.cardiovasc.net/).

Key Words: Resuscitation • Surgery • Cardiac arrest • Emergency resternotomy • ECMO • Intensive care unit

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Today, the most frequent issues addressed with regard to the cardiac intensive care unit deal with infection [1,2], bleeding [3], stroke [4], and other outcome related end-points. However, the therapeutic strategies to be adopted for effective treatment of cardio-circulatory arrest early after open heart surgery, i.e. during the period such patients are in the intensive care unit (ICU) have not been discussed recently and deserve special considerations for a number of reasons.

First of all, not all patients operated on their heart recently are created equal. There are differences with regard to the access selected, the type of procedure performed, the pre- and postoperative cardiac function, the response of the other organ systems, the quality of the hemostasis achieved, and last . . . [Full Text of this Article]